A Night of Karaoke with Rob Sheffield

There are few men I'd feel comfortable belting out a duet of Rebecca Black's "Friday" with. But author and veteran Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield is now definitively on that list. He and I spent a recent evening singing at an East Village bar to celebrate his karaoke-inspired memoir Turn Around Bright Eyes, out today. Between what some might consider too many Oasis songs (and absolutely no Journey), we traded obscure pop-culture references, discussed the unwritten rules of karaoke, and Rob finally broke his long-standing edict to never perform Bob Dylan in public.

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ESQUIRE.COM: So why revisit your love of karaoke in Turn Around Bright Eyes after touching on it in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran?

ROB SHEFFIELD: I just felt I barely approached the topic. It's weird that karaoke is so universal, but so hard to write about. It's something that TV shows and films are more comfortable depicting, but the emotional underpinnings are harder to put on the page. It's almost taboo. Rock critics tend to be really into karaoke because most of us suck at actually making music. But it's a guilty pleasure. There's almost a shame built into living out that pop-star fantasy so brazenly, and I guess I wanted to write about it because I wanted to understand why it has this hold on my psyche.

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ESQ: Do you try to mimic the artist when you sing, or do you put your own mark on it?

RS: Boy, if I could mimic I would. But that would require actually being able to sing. Some of my friends are great singers. My friend Melissa: great singer. And it's fun to make her do Cher songs because she can do a spot-on imitation of the voice. It's hilariously fun and has us rolling in the aisles. "If I could turn back time!" [note: Rob's own imitation is pretty impressive] But you don't always want to imitate the singers. One of the things you realize doing karaoke is that they're the pros for a reason. Last week I was trying to do Stevie Nicks and I was like, "Wow, I need a couple more beers before I try this one, because my voice is still a little too clean-sounding. But after a few more rounds I'll totally be able to do 'Gold Dust Woman.'"

ESQ: So you're not a secretly talented singer or musician?

RS: No. I've always had friends who were musicians and I've always coveted that skill. For me it just seems like the most mind-blowing thing to just pick up a guitar and write a song. I have friends who can do that in twenty minutes and not even think about it. So part of why I'm so obsessed with karaoke is that it's a culmination of so many years of wanting to be fearless with a regard to music. But my fears about performing music in front of people have mostly been justified, and my attempts have been mostly very poor.

But if there was a Faustian bargain where I could play guitar but nobody would ever hear me, I would be fine with that. If nobody would ever hear me and I would never have an audience and I'd never make the crowd roar or see my friends smile, I would still be okay with that. Because it would be satisfying enough to be good at that and make music on that level. Which is why when someone like Bono or Questlove tries their hand at being a rock critic and they're actually really fucking great at it, it's kind of threatening. It's like, "You want this, too?!"

ESQ: How do you get inspired to try a new song on stage?

RS: There are some songs that, when you hear them, you're like, "Oh, I'd love to sing this one," and you almost immediately have to go out and do it. But even if you're doing a short little karaoke session, you'll want to do one song that you haven't done before. A friend of mine was telling me that her boyfriend keeps a chart, like a spreadsheet, of every song he's ever sung and he never sings the same song twice. That seems madness to me. I could never do that. I could never have that discipline.

ESQ: See, I always feel like I'm building up a catalogue of songs I'm comfortable performing. And I take a little bit of pride in not needing the karaoke screen.

RS: Yeah. I have to admit, me, too. It depends on the song, because some songs are wordy and complicated. But some songs are in your bones. It's like, "Oh, how nice that the screen is there." You don't make a point of not looking to it, but you see it as something to help everybody else at singing along. But it's one of those things where the advantage of being able to do something without the technology becomes a meaningless thing. I was so proud of when I knew the words to "Johnny B. Goode" at Rock and Roll Fantasy camp, but I didn't know them any better than anybody else the next day, because we could print them out.

ESQ: Knowing music as well as you do, do you ever challenge the book? Like, pick an obscure song and decide that, if it's in there, you have to sing it?

RS:[Laughs.] Sometimes. There's definitely the thing, and I don't know if you've had this experience, when you find a song and you pity-sing it because you figure nobody has ever sung it but you. I've had that experience quite a few times. At Sing Sing they actually put in the third Frankie Goes to Hollywood hit. There was "Relax" and "Two Tribes," which are still really famous. And then there's their sensitive ballad "The Power of Love," which nobody liked at all but me. When I found it in the book I was like, "I have to sing it. I have to give it a home."

ESQ: I feel that way about this one song: "Steal the Night" by Michael Bishop. It was the chase scene in Bloodsport and I always, always have to look for it.

RS: Wow. Have you ever found it?

ESQ: No. Never.

RS: There's an 80's action-movie song I would actually love to sing at karaoke. I've never thought to look for it, but it's the love theme from Cobra. "Loving on Borrowed Time" by Gladys Knight.

ESQ: Yeah, I think you mentioned your affection for that song in Turn Around.

RS: Well I don't think I've really moved the needle in terms of making that song any more famous than it was. But I really like Cobra. I watch it at least once a year. Its always on USA Network when I come home drunk at 4 a.m. and I'm like, "Cobra's on!" That's kind of a bad habit.

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ESQ: And in that same vein of music from '80s action movies, do you and your friends ever pick a theme for the evening? Like, "We're only doing hair metal tonight."

RS: We've done an all-new-songs night, especially if we've all sung karaoke together before. Which is kind of a challenge, because your mind just wanders to the voices you already know. And after Adam Yauch died last year, we found all the songs the Beastie Boys sampled and decided we were just going to rap over the music. It turned out that it wasn't that hard. But we were definitely there for the reason, we had a specific karaoke agenda in mind, and we had some serious emotional business that had to be done. Same with after Davy Jones died. My wife and I went to Sing Sing and said, "We're doing 'em all!" When that's your way of performing music it becomes an emotional outlet.

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ESQ: Does the crowd embrace that or do they revolt?

RS: For those nights we got our own room, because we knew we were on a mission. That's a different thing, and I don't want to hurt any innocent bystanders. They might not be able to take it. You know Louis C.K.'s sitcom? There's a scene when he goes to the bar with Parker Posey. She goes up to get a drink and the bartender says, "Not after last time"? There's a bit of that with karaoke when you think, "Wow, after the way I butchered that Beyonce song, I have to let a week go by before I go back to that place. I want them to forget me. I want them to forget my face."

ESQ: Are there official rules of karaoke? And not the silly cliché that "The only rule is... there are no rules!"

RS:[Laughs.] There's no official set of rules, but you figure them out: No long songs, no slow songs, no depressing songs or songs that are really introspective.

ESQ: But what if you're feeling something that night and you need to get some shit off your chest, even if the rest of the room isn't there with you?

RS: You know, I'm 100-percent for that. Part of what karaoke is for is to say "Okay, I'm not feeling what this person is doing, but they needed this song right now." Because another part of karaoke code is not judging. Just take your bathroom break if you have to. I try to be observant of rules and codes and interactions, but people are always into emotional states that karaoke brings out and you have to indulge that.

ESQ: So what's an easy go-to for you? Someone like Bob Dylan?

RS: Bob Dylan is on my personal strike list, because he's one of my favorite artists of all time. I love Bob Dylan. I worship Bob Dylan, always have. But I find I can't do those songs. They go over like a lead balloon when I do them because they're too poetic. It's hard to make those songs work in that environment.

ESQ: I think you could pull off the fast version of "Forever Young."

RS: Holy shit, I would never try that. I saw an old guy a couple years ago do "Lay Lady Lay" and thought, "Better you than me, man." It was really rough to watch. Dylan songs have a lot of long pauses where you just force the audience to wait for you. And also, he's an artist who I worship, but my wife's not a big Dylan fan. So it cuts into my enjoyment if I'm doing a song that only I'm going to like and she's going to be bored.

ESQ: But you similarly worship Bowie, and you almost perform his mannerisms when you sing his songs.

RS: It's weird — Bowie and Dylan have both been so huge for me since I was a teenage boy. Both huge artists who I thought of as a kid as, like, on such opposite poles of the human psyche. I thought of Dylan as really naturalistic and Bowie as overtly artificial. And I thought of the artists I liked as Bowie-like or Dylan-like with no crossover at all. Duran Duran is in Bowie mode. So Bowie is almost intrinsically karaokeish. There's no Bowie song that's beyond karaoke. But I would never do Dylan at karaoke. He's just a different mode.

ESQ: Is it that you feel you can almost parody Bowie with your voice and movements, but you can't perform like Dylan?

RS: See, I feel if I was a better karaoke singer I could put that aspect of Dylan across, because Dylan is an amazing showman. He's someone who can actually sell those songs in a dramatic context. And something that's distinctive about both of them is their ability to project into a big room. They can go over even if nobody knows the songs. Dylan can kill in a state fair. And I can't do that. I can do that with a Bowie song, but not a Dylan song. And Paul Simon is another artist that never works at karaoke.

ESQ: Really? I think "Me and Julio" and "Call Me Al" are both on the table.

RS: Interesting. And I bet "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover" would work, too. But I was actually just at a bar when someone did "The Sounds of Silence" and I thought, "Wow, this has to be one of the least karaoke songs ever." The student-y slash introspection slash alienation thing just doesn't carry over to that kind of environment. Sometimes you'll do songs and people will be like, "Oh God!" But part of the way karaoke is organized is that you can get into it, but then deny it the next day. Because it's spontaneous and it's dark, so people are forced to deal with music that they'd normally sequester themselves from by daylight.

ESQ: Is there a song you aren't willing to do?

RS: I'll try anything once. Do you remember the kind-of hit a couple years ago, "Friday" by Rebecca Black? Much maligned, but I loved it. I think it's a great karaoke song. And the first time I heard it, and it was everywhere after only a few hours, I texted a friend to ask, "How long do we have to wait before this gets in the book in Sing Sing?" I couldn't wait.

ESQ: And how long did you have to wait?

RS: It only took about a month or so.

ESQ: Oh. So we're definitely closing with that tonight.

RS: Yes! But I'll admit, there are some that are just too hard. One song I try every few years is "Word Up" by Cameo, which is one of my favorite songs ever. But with the lung power that it requires, I just get out of breath. It's rhythmically intricate and a very fast-paced, wordy song. For some reason I still try it, and I still keep thinking some day I'm going to crack the "Word Up" barrier. I remember the first and only time I ever tried Bowie's "Life on Mars." I got to the first chorus and I was like "Okay, I'm not going to be able to sing this at all. I don't know what possessed me to try. This song's impossible." I even had a twinge: "Should I apologize to the audience?" But you never have to apologize. That's what karaoke is. Never having to say you're sorry.